The main story-line, Khanna attempting to establish a guesthouse with her uncle’s family in a small Armenian village, is aided by the telling of bitter and funny stories of her memories during the Soviet Union and Armenia’s independence.

The house, which Khanna plans to renovate into a guesthouse, was owned by her uncle’s insane neighbor – Lev, who just recently passed away. For some unknown reason, Lev was buried in the old cemetery instead of the new one. The sons of late Lev are gangsters in Russia, and it is rumored they are at the crux of horrible plots. They have suspicions that their father was murdered.

Khanna’s grandmother, a fierce, lambent and fanatically religious character, is disgusted at the uttering of Lev’s name; these surprises those near her. She stands staunchly against the opening of a guesthouse. There is an everlasting resistance between Khanna and her grandmother, who cannot understand or accept Khanna for her lifestyle and opinions.  

Khanna applies for a grant to start the guesthouse. The grant proposal is included within the novel in near real format to reveal the differences in how we present ourselves and what we really are. The proposal is opposed to the novel, which showcases the real Armenia, its vitality and liveliness. The project proposal is rejected, but nevertheless, she decides to bring her idea to fruition. She meets ordinary people who share stories about their small hometown, Artik, where Khanna was born. She, in turn, shares these stories. She plans to use them to promote her hometown and her business. The rural setting and small, local community show themselves quaint and entertaining.

Khanna is complicated, contradictory at times, with a passion for those she loves and hates. She’s in her mid-30’s, married, and doesn’t plan to have children. The hidden conflict with her mother-in-law, also, continues to eat at her patience.

Meanwhile, the rumors about Լev’s sons as gangsters in Russia persist throughout the community chatter, and they are said to have doubts about his deemed natural death. 

Khanna’s unbearably difficult years of depression, anxiety, and panic attacks land her in an embarrassing situation during her trip to Germany. She, also, learns she’s carrying; then under the excuse of taking antidepressant drugs she induces miscarriage. In coping with this event, she tries acupuncture and meditation, yet she still starts taking antidepressants. These pages are written with a deep and existential heaviness.

Khanna meets a man, Atom. Khanna loves their secret sexual relationship. However, when she learns that Atom is in love with another woman, she abandons him. This storyline gives the novel impressive erotic shade. 

Her whole inner world, her craving for love, her sexual striving come to a head with her uncle’s younger son Abgar. As they work together on the guesthouse, Khanna makes several passionate attempts to attract Abgar, but Abgar resists. The pages describing this storyline are poetic, with photographic details of their exchanges, and photographic descriptions of the setting.

The short but striking pages about the revived 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, depict Aksel – Abgar’s elder brother who participated in the war – has since got a “haze” in his eyes. 

Rudik, Lev’s younger son, arrives from Moscow to exhume his father. Khanna is surprised by his looks, which are far from how she would imagine gangsters to be. With long blond hair, slim and tall, and a sad face that resembles her uncle’s.

The exhumation proves Lev was poisoned.

The grandmother is a magically impressive character who develops throughout the novel. In the beginning, she is healthy, demanding, and busy despite her age, but her health takes a negative turn with onset of dementia. Her condition deteriorates to the point where she becomes senile and reveals to Khanna that she had been poisoning Lev for years. The reason she gives is that Lev was her only son’s father. After having her fifth daughter and no sons, it became obvious to her that it was, in fact, her husband who could not beget sons. That is when she decided to use Lev to have a son. When Lev goes crazy, she starts to hate him. Khanna cannot understand if her grandmother is telling the truth or is being delirious.

After a final household quarrel with her husband, Khanna decides to divorce him. 

At the end, when the guesthouse is ready for guests, Khanna wakes up to find out the house is ablaze. Khanna sees her grandmother in the dark returning from Lev’s grave. She suspects the grandmother to have set the guesthouse on fire to get revenge.

Khanna’s uncle tells her the news about Lev’s son, Rudik, being killed in Russia. He cries without knowing that Rudik was his brother. 

The last scene depicts the grandmother’s funeral. Khanna smokes in the barn when Abgar enters. Passion fills the room. They embrace each other, kiss, and take off their clothes. Abgar ejaculates at Khanna’s legs and belly, they burst out laughing. This is how the novel ends.

Throughout the entire novel, the storyline is paralleled by Khanna’s erotic dreams; nature settings embody Khanna’s sexuality. There are scenes at hospitals and psychiatric wards where Khanna is a frequent visitor, childhood and teenage memories, and short fragments of the everyday household problems with her mother-in-law. The novel passes through four seasons of the year. The year and novel both end in autumn, which is when everything began. The external structure of the novel is assembled like a puzzle where narrative episodes emerge at random times as well as the going back and forth between times and events. The authentic voice ranges between bitter and humorous, sharing interesting and strange events, which seems to be built by the language itself. The writing is bold and natural. The whole novel talks openly about every single personal thing. However, at the end there is a feeling that something is left uncovered, a secret that is not told, but rather kept as a treasure.